


This Is Becoming A Habit

by tokidokifish



Category: Good Omens, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angels, Character Study, Children, Demons, Drabble Collection, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:19:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokidokifish/pseuds/tokidokifish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of the various drabbles I've posted on tumblr. Wherein there are demons in cardigans, single fathers, detectives, and maybe a picture or two, among other things, and Charles Xavier is most always a slut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Good Omens: First Class

**Author's Note:**

> Good Omens: First Class - but not exactly the way you'd probably expect.

Erik leans towards sunglasses and leather jackets when he isn’t wearing impeccably tailored suits. He likes the newest technology and his Bentley and keeps a well-appointed flat, but he doesn’t much seem to like people, and when he smiles, really smiles, he shows far, far too many teeth.

Charles likes cardigans and maintains a preoccupation with argyle that borders on worrisome. He has a bookstore and a modest flat above it, and there’s not much to tell between them, because both are cluttered and cozy and full of a sprawling, lovingly disorganized collection of books. Charles is gregarious to a fault, and his smiles are all blue eyes and red lips and _understanding_.

If anyone knew about them, really, they would think Erik is the demon and Charles the angel.

But that’s because not everyone realizes you don’t have to like people to love them, and you don’t have to love people to be _entertained_ by them.

 

 

Charles hadn’t meant to fall, not really. Erik _almost_ fell, quite a lot more purposefully.

These two facts are related.

 

 

Back before Erik is Erik and Charles is Charles, Erik sees things entirely in black and white. Consequently, it takes Charles _centuries_ to get back in his good graces after the Fall, during which Erik manages to discorporate five perfectly good bodies.

“Is this _really_ necessary, old friend?” Charles asks, right before he loses the fifth, because he _likes_ that one and he’s really not inclined to let it go without saying _something_. 

“It wouldn’t be if you _stopped coming back_ ,” Erik replies, but at least holy fire is relatively quick, as these things go. 

Some fifty years later, Charles has a new body, and this one ends up sticking, because when he finally finds Erik again, the angel is well and truly drunk for what Charles thinks must be the first time in his _existence_. Erik is, in fact, drunk enough to ask _why_ , when he realizes Charles has returned once again, but he’s sober enough yet not to expect an answer, because they both know, even if neither of them really wants to say.

Charles doesn’t know what centuries of guilt and nothing else would do to an angel, and he’s really not eager to find out.

So he simply gleans enough information about what’s happened in his absence to think _oh_ , and decides that drinking _really_ was the way to go, and apparently, for once, Erik wouldn’t mind the company. And it may not be like it was before, but then it never really will be, and at least nothing holy and painful is happening, so it’s certainly a start.

 

 

They don’t talk about the 40s, much.

The closest they had gotten to having to acknowledge it was after Charles had got a _commendation_ , whereupon he got _incredibly_ drunk and slept for a solid two decades, missing out on the 50s entirely and just about all of the 60s. He turned up in Erik’s flat after he woke up in 1969, wrecked on something other than alcohol, and tried, “I would never– _I could never_ –” when the angel found him there.

 Erik shut him up with tea because he certainly didn’t need more alcohol, and they sat on the sofa and watched video of the moon landing that Charles had missed and, eventually, Charles started talking about planting the idea it was faked and everything was back to normal.

Because it was hardly as if he needed to _say_. Because while Erik worked miracles from inside the camps, Charles had always been there, making what he called mischief because he could hardly call what he did miracles too.

 

 

On occasion, Erik asks if he regrets it.

Charles always says no, even if his answer is different every time.

Because for the first few hundred years, when they were still fighting, Erik would throw it out as a condemnation, and Charles  _did_  regret it, he regretted it with every fiber of his being because everything he had ever been was gone now, and there was only dark, endless, aching emptiness. But he would smile, cheeky, and say no, because that’s what one  _did_ in such situations. 

Then Erik had forgiven him – or rather, Erik had forgiven himself enough that he could stand letting Charles around him again. And when he asked, voice unusually soft and hesitant with unspoken regret – usually when he got drunk (which was, admittedly, more often than not when Charles found himself in the angel’s company) – Charles would look into his eyes and say no, because he still ached terribly, constantly, but the other option was unthinkable.

The Middle Ages were fucking  _awful_ , thank you, and Charles had given it up and gone to sleep around the time Pestilence started getting unbearably full of himself.  _Erik_  was actually the one that eventually woke him up again when the Black Death  _finally_  died down and things started getting interesting again, and the entire thing filled Charles with that embarrassing, honest, quiet delight he saved just for the angel and never vocalized. And when the question came up again (quite naturally, really) when they dropped by to see how the alter wall in the Sistine Chapel had turned out, and Charles said no again, it was for once both honest and for himself, because yes, the ache was still there – it would always be there, by desire and design – there was  _so much more_ , and he  _loved_  it. 

By the time they can be firmly called friends again (though Erik never does; Charles is more than happy to do it enough for the both of them) – when they meet regularly to play chess, or discuss matters both metaphysical and mundane, or drink not out of despair but for the simple pleasure of it – Erik asks him again for the first time in years, pleasantly tipsy on good wine in Charles’ flat. “No,” Charles answers, as always, but this time he rolls his head over to look at Erik and adds, softer than he meant to, “Do you?” And there’s no condemnation – it’s not even really  _about_  him, because what Charles means isn't  _do you regret that I fell?_  but rather something closer to  _do you regret that it wasn't you_?

Erik understands what he means, Charles knows. But the angel has no answer. 

 

 


	2. The Law & Order 'Verse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Musings on the effect of mutant powers on law enforcement that became something... more.

Most people would claim that saying Erik was in a shit mood when he first met Charles Xavier would be redundant, because as far as most everyone else in the station was concerned, Erik Lehnsherr was always in a shit mood, barring the occasional respite for a good dose of _schadenfreude_. On his best days he wouldn’t have had an inordinate amount of patience for finding what seemed to be a graduate student in a cardigan perched on the edge of his desk, studying the twisted mass of metal that had once been a paperweight and now served as something of a stress ball. But Erik _wasn’t_ having one of his best days, so the first thing he ever said to his new partner was, “Why the fuck are you on my desk?”

“To protect and serve, or at least that’s what they tell me,” Charles had replied, all guileless blue eyes, and Erik cursed. Extensively. In German.

“Language,” Charles hummed, smiling serenely.

 

 

When he first met Charles, Erik thought the telepath was arrogant. Later, when they were on better terms – when Charles had proven himself capable not only in the field but also at dealing with having Erik as a partner – he amended that judgment to “naïve and cocky”, and it became something he was almost _fond_ of, in his own way, even if he spent a good deal of his time arguing over chess, trying to shake Charles out of the blissful ignorance that came from growing up in an atmosphere of unbelievable privilege.

It’s _ages_ before he realizes just how wrong he was, when they’re staring at the crime-scene photos of a particularly vicious killer, and he thinks to look up at his partner. And there is no disgust in Charles’ eyes, no _shock_ , but something like acceptance only worse – _resignation_. and Erik realizes with a start that Charles must have seen this all before; hundreds, _thousands_ of mankind’s most depraved fantasies, the kind of thing that’s never spoken aloud but also _never leaves your mind_ , always waiting in the darkest corner of your subconscious, picked over with guilt or silently nurtured by ugly, impossible _desire_. And of course he knew that; hell, he’s thrown it in Charles’ face before, but it’s the first time it occurs to him what that _means_.

It occurs to Erik to wonder what it had been like when Charles was young, before he could control his abilities.

It occurs to Erik that perhaps the reason Charles is so irrepressibly optimistic about man’s innate goodness is because contemplating the alternative would be inviting madness.

 

 

Erik’s mutation is that he can control magnetic fields. This doesn’t bring anything _exclusively_ to his skills in law enforcement – yes, guns are frankly an _afterthought_ for him and any firefight he’s caught in will end very badly for whoever’s shooting at him, but it is an inescapable fact his abilities could be best served elsewhere. The first person that snidely suggested perhaps he would be better suited to construction had gotten punched in the face, however, so people usually avoid mentioning it.

Telepaths, on the other hand, are _incredibly_ useful. Back when people still sniggered that the idea of mutant rights was an oxymoron and boundaries were ill-defined, they had been employed as human polygraph machines, but while a suitably powerful mutant could easily pluck the truth out of someone’s mind, there remained the messy business of whether the _telepath_ was being honest. It had still taken a few truly breathtaking cases of corruption to put a stop to the practice, but now agencies have to show due cause to read someone’s mind in the course of an investigation, and no one can be convicted on a telepath’s word in lieu of any other evidence.

They are, however, still employed as _extraordinary_ investigators. Granted, some people know how to block a telepath and a smaller number have mutations of their own to resist psychic abilities, but a good telepath, given a credible suspect and a warrant, can close an investigation in an afternoon.  

Charles is not a good telepath. He’s _astonishing_.

 

 

Charles fills his mind with surprised, breathless delight when Erik doesn’t shake off the tentative connection between them, and then almost immediately tries to rein it back, because this – it’s an _experiment_ , it’s Erik’s _choice_ , and obviously if he decides it’s unbearable that’s _fine_. Except that is isn’t, Erik realizes with a twist in his chest so painful that it briefly takes his breath away, because Charles was born with this as much as any of them were, and for his _entire life_ people had been telling him it was a bad thing.

“I’m sorry,” the telepath says, apologetic, but under it Erik can still feel the hidden flash of fear and sorrow that even this simple pleasure of freely using his abilities will be unacceptable, and under _that_ , the brief, bright pain of _years_ of tiny, off-hand rejections and rebukes, suppressed to an extreme and horrible in how _guilty_ it is.

If anything, Charles looks even _worse_. “I’m sorry,” he says, again.

“Shut up,” Erik hisses, “God, Charles, just – _shut the fuck up_.” And he’s grabbing the telepath, yanking him in for a kiss, hard and almost painful before Erik remembers it’s not _Charles_ he’s angry at.

 _I love you_ , he tells Charles, reaching up to cup his face, turning the kiss into something slower, deeper. _I love you, you stupid beautiful bastard, every fucking part of you. Don’t you fucking_ dare _go back to hiding yourself_.

If Charles makes a noise dangerously close to a sob against Erik’s mouth, he doesn’t pay attention, because Charles’ mind is all happiness and a love so staggeringly intense it might be terrifying if he didn’t feel the exact same way. 


	3. The OT3 'Verse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charles/Raven always struck me as borderline incestuous and pretty damn creepy... until I had a dream about Erik/Charles/Raven. Thanks subconscious! You're a pal.

Raven meets Charles when he’s 12 and she’s 11 and their parents are getting married. And of course they aren’t  _alone_ , not really, but to Charles and Raven they have each other and no one else, and so they shadow the halls of the big empty Westchester mansion and the expansive grounds, always together. Raven prefers to play make-believe and explore outside and Charles likes curl up in one of the comfortably worn armchairs in his father’s library to read, but obviously there’s plenty of time in the day to do both. It never occurs to either of them to fight when they can just share everything anyhow.

People find them cute. Lying together on the second-floor landing after they’ve sat through a formal dinner and then been sent up to bed, they listen to people talk about them:  _they’re so well-behaved! And how adorably close; you’d never even guess that they’re only stepsiblings_.

People expect them to grow out of it.

 

 

“You’ve had time to get a feel for him, haven’t you?” Sitting up beside him, legs drawn up and arms around them, Raven can just make out the curve of Charles’ smile, the dark crescents of his lashes lying against his cheeks. It makes her smile too, setting her chin on her knees.

“Of course.” Their parents hired a new handyman during the spring term; tall and German and severe. He was reticent when they first arrived – he didn’t much care for Sharon and Kurt, and he obviously expected Charles and Raven to behave like younger, more spoiled versions of Cain. He  _likes_  them now, though, because Raven makes him laugh with cutting jokes in German right in front of her parents, and Charles, Charles has always been too charming for anyone to honestly hate, and too intelligent for anyone to write off as simply that.

 “I like him,” Charles says, opening his eyes and looking up at her in the dark, still smiling. “Almost more than anyone, I think.”

“So do I,” she confesses, and uncurls to settle back into her spot against him, curled around each other like it’s the most natural thing in the world, which of course it is.

“I’m so happy to hear you say that, love,” Charles says, and he’s grinning just like he always does, cheeky and pleased, but she can hear the honest delight in his voice, and she understands, because there’s something  _about_ Erik. And she’s smiling, when he shifts to stroke her hair back and kiss her, soft and slow and sweet.

It doesn’t stay that way, of course, and eternities later Charles is whispering all of his wonderfully filthy fantasies for the three of them to her, laughing breathlessly and lingering on the ones that make her whimper and arch and squirm against him, until he loses all coherence and presses his forehead to her shoulder, gasping, “oh, Raven, _Raven_ ” when she catches her breath and takes up where he left off.

They’ve always shared everything; it’s only natural they would share this, too.


	4. The Manny 'Verse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eternally, tragically unfinished, and based on this kink meme prompt:  
>  _Erik is a very rich (new money), very lonely VP of some Fortune 500 company who needs a nanny for his two kids. Charles is a struggling grad student who, estranged from his asshole family (except for his sister), needs some extra money. OR VICE VERSA, Charles is a very rich, very lonely geneticist who needs a nanny for his children and Erik is a struggling artist who needs some extra money._  
>  _MAGIC HAPPENS, THEY FALL IN LOVE._  
>  But, you know. Different.

Erik Lehnsherr is 32, gay, and a lawyer. He also has two children, through circumstances that were hilarious and tragic in turn. Because he and Magda sleeping together wasn’t something either of them ever really expecting, but then he had been younger, just leaving his first serious relationship under highly unpleasant circumstances, and extremely drunk, and somehow they had both gotten it into their heads that all men were cads and maybe he would try women and of course it might as well be his oldest friend. In the light of the morning, and after a pair of truly amazing hangovers, the whole thing had seemed like the kind of situation they would enjoy mortifying each other with for years to come, and then a few weeks later they found themselves on Magda’s couch, heads together, waiting for lines to appear on a little white stick.

“Oh God,” Erik said.

“I can’t believe it,” Magda said. “You sleep with a woman for the first and only time in your life, and you manage to knock her up.”

Though it certainly took care of the rather intimidating prospect of being a single woman trying to adopt, even if it was slightly earlier than she would have planned.

The twins – Wanda and Pietro – were unexpected; Magda’s death, four years later, was even more so.

Erik took the twins home from the hospital after the doctor had gently pulled him aside and told him Magda was gone. They eventually fell asleep in his bed, and he sat on the sofa, running his mind over their options. There was Magda’s family, of course. Then there was the foster system. Or there was him.

To his knowledge, Wanda and Pietro had never met any member of their extended family. And Erik was intimately familiar with the foster system.

So in the end there really there hadn’t been any option at all.

 

 

Two years later, Emma Frost drops into a chair across from him at the restaurant they’re meeting for lunch, and immediately offers, “You look like shit, sugar.”

Emma is of indeterminate age (“a lady never tells and a gentleman never asks”), blonde, and from old money. She is terribly catty and makes stylistic choices that would be suicide if attempted by anyone else, and is, in general, Erik’s best friend since Magda’s death. He met her before he went to work for the DA, just after her second husband died, when she was being sued by her stepchildren over the contents of their father’s will. When she sat down in his office, Erik noted that she was young, and coldly beautiful, and dressed completely in white, and made several assumptions, most of which were proven entirely incorrect by the time she walked out.

Which is rather par for the course, when it comes to her, because Emma Frost is an incredibly intelligent if not somewhat vindictive mind wrapped up in blonde hair and a great rack.   

She is also the absolute last thing Erik wants to deal with today.

“Why did I agree to this?” he asks. “Why did I think I wanted to see you?”

“Because I said I would pay for lunch,” she replies, with a cool sliver of a smile. “It’s nice to see you too, Erik. Shall I ask how the children are?”

He groans. She laughs, which – as always – is Erik’s cue to make a show of leaving in a huff before she waves one imperious, impeccably manicured hand at him.

“Pietro got out,” is what he offers when he settles back in his chair. “Again. He was halfway down to the lobby before I managed to catch him.” That warrants an arch of one sculpted blonde brow; impressive indeed. “So I stayed up the rest of the night… insane six-year-old proofing.”

“Again.” She’s smirking at him. He’s absolutely positive that she arranges these lunches because she thrives on schadenfreude.

“Again.” He rubs the bridge of his nose, sighing. “He _defies logic_. And possibly physics. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but they’ve chased off our latest nanny.”

“And you happen to be in luck, darling,” she says, and it’s his turn to arch a brow, because this is different from their usual routine (wherein Erik complains and Emma mocks him and pays for lunch). “I happen to have an old friend looking for a job while he’s getting his PhD. And I imagine either your children will eat him alive, or they’ll all get along like a house on fire, and either way, it’s going to be amusing. For me, at least.”

She produces a card from her purse, because Emma is the sort of woman who carries around business cards despite only nominally being involved in a business, and flips it over, writing out a telephone number and then a name in her graceful, looping script.

“Not exactly a vote of confidence,” Erik points out, and she gives him another smile, the one she saves for things like stupid questions.

“Coming from me, sugar?” she hums, and offers him the card with that same smile. “I’ll vouch for him.”

Erik takes it, flipping it over to read the name: Charles F. Xavier.

Well. It’s certainly worth a shot.

 

 

When Erik gets in touch with him later that evening, Charles F. Xavier proves to have an English accent, and be more than willing to come over the next morning and meet the children. He’s also extremely punctual and, when he arrives, unnervingly cheerful, considering it’s 7 am.

He’s nothing like Erik expected.

Because when Emma had told him Charles was an old friend – “old enough that if you ask him how long we’ve known each other, I’ll deny it” – Erik had pictured… something. He wasn’t sure exactly what, but it certainly wasn’t ridiculously blue eyes and incredibly red lips and _a cardigan_.

Erik’s mind gropes in vain for an adjective that will suffice to label Charles Xavier, and settles on “fluffy” a bit more firmly than he would have liked.

Charles smiles and introduces himself and then asks when Erik needs to leave for work, and after getting a reply he sweeps into the kitchen and starts making them all breakfast. Erik drifts after him, half-tempted to be vaguely insulted, but then Charles takes the opportunity to ask about the children, their schedules, and what they’d prefer for breakfast, and Erik really doesn’t have a chance. 

He leaves eventually to wake the children up, and by the time he returns with Wanda and Pietro in tow Charles has finished making pancakes and eggs and the turkey bacon he found in the fridge.

“Well,” Erik says, at a loss. “Let’s see how today goes.”

Charles offers him a cup of coffee and a brilliant smile.


	5. even among mutants, what he does is unacceptable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charles should absolutely respect everyone's abilities... and never exercise his own.

When he is young, Charles doesn’t know the difference between things people say aloud and what they say in their mind. But he _does_ understand confusion and fear; the way they look at him when he responds to something thought but didn’t say, the way his parents’ wealthy friends won’t let their children play with him, the way they can’t keep a nanny. They look at him in concern and think about sending him away, so Charles stops talking at all until he learns what he’s supposed to hear. And eventually it becomes just another quirk of childhood, and they forget.

But Charles doesn’t.

 

 

When he meets Raven, he’s beyond excited; he’s _ecstatic_ , because he’s not alone, because there’s someone that will understand and won’t be afraid.

Two years later, she stares at him, hair brown and skin pale but eyes gold and grave, and demands, “Promise me you won’t ever do that again, Charles. _Promise me_.” And he wants to tell she might as well make him promise not to _see_ , because he can make an effort not to pay attention but he _can’t turn it off_ ; it’s just as much a part of him as her blue, shifting skin. There’s a tiny part of him that is actually just 14, not decades older thanks to lifetimes lived in the minds of others, that wants to tell her, “I thought I wasn’t alone.”

But Charles just smiles and says, “Of course, Raven. I’m sorry – I didn’t know it bothered you.” And then he leaves the library and goes upstairs to his bedroom and _doesn’t cry_.

 

 

The first time he has a serious relationship, he’s 16 and thinks he’s in love.

They’ve been going on three months when Charles finally tells her, and watches the curious and adoring light in her eyes turn into _fear_ , and then anger, and then disgust. He doesn’t need to be a telepath to know she’s going over every conversation they’ve had, every night they’ve spent together, but he certainly gets it in Technicolor.

Charles carefully takes the memory of the last few minutes, and tells her, “I love you,” when she looks at him, curious once again to know what he wanted to tell her, and he’s never told a bigger lie.

They break up the next week.

 

 

Charles likes sex – _adores_ sex, really, but it’s lacking. Because beyond their bodies, beyond the physical, there’s something _so much more_ , so much better and deeper and _brilliant_ , and he _knows_ it. No matter how deep or passionate it’s never enough; he’s never satisfied, and even if it’s more his fault than theirs, once he’s alone again and the bitterness wells up he can’t help but associate it with whatever particular partner he entertained for the evening.

He doesn’t promise anything more than one-night stands, these days. But still, he inevitably finds himself back in the bar, commenting on what a “groovy mutation” someone’s eyes or hair are, hoping that maybe this time it’ll be enough.

 

 

Raven is angry at him, all the time, because he knows he can’t be what she needs. He wonders how, between the thousands of little repetitions – _you promised you wouldn’t read my mind, Charles; stay out of my head, Charles_ – why she doesn’t realize she couldn’t be what he needs, either.

 

\--

 

They can’t give up on one another, and oh, how they’ve tried. Months of agonized separation gave way to months of tentative contact, and now they meet every two weeks or so, to play chess, and it’s almost the same but for all the ways it’s not. They argue, but there are no missiles or terribly misdirected bullets, just the soft sounds of life that drift through the park, punctuated now and again by the muted clack of a chess piece.

“Charles,” Erik says, one day, touched with gold in the light of sunset. The fact that Charles has been making cautious forays into dealing with the government once again – and they both know it – has been coloring their conversation all evening. “They will _never_ accept you, not really, you must know that. No matter how intelligent or well-spoken you are, they will only ever see you as something dangerous and inhuman.”

“Oh Erik,” Charles sighs, after a long moment, and reaches out to touch the bottom edge of Erik’s helmet. He flinches back automatically, out of reach, and the telepath laughs, soft and sad.

“Mutant and proud, yes?” he murmurs, eyes achingly old. “You think of me as just as much of a monster as they ever will, my friend.”


End file.
